Telling tales, of walking in wild places, of painting, of sleeping in warm places and of mice and other things....

Saturday, November 17, 2007

The Achievement of the Cat

All day the wind has been rising, and now, in the dark, it rips the clouds from the sky and dashes them to the ground, fierce spears of rain. It pushes its paws through the cat flap, through the smallest spaces around the windows, under doors and tries to steal our fire. We can hear its footfall as it washes over the roof, wave upon wave of rain. We can feel the house shake to its roots. But we are warm, curled ammonite tight in our cat dreams by the golden glow of firelight.She read us a story. The Achievement of the Cat. Among other things it says" It is, indeed, no small triumph to have combined the untrammelled liberty of primeval savagery with the luxury which only a highly developed civilization can command; to be lapped in the soft stuffs that commerce has gathered from the far ends of the world, to bask in the warmth that labour and industry have dragged from the bowels of the earth; to banquet on the dainties that wealth has bespoken for its table, and withal to be a free son of nature, a mighty hunter, a spiller of life-blood. This is the victory of the cat."Miaow!

1 comment:

I laughed out loud at that. How very true. I sometimes try to imagine the first person to be owned by a cat. Sitting in a cave by a warm fire, enjoying a lovely lump of roast mammoth, when out of the cold dark outside marched a purring cat, upright tail waving gently with the end curled just so, eyes fixed firmly on the meat. I know it wasn't like that really, but still...

The Three

When first we started there were four of us, all ginger, and Max. Time has passed. The ginger pride are ghost cats, appart from Elmo. Now the house holds Max, oldest, tabby farm cat, dark, usually found sleeping on a cushion, Elmo, last of the Gingers, beautiful handsome and wonderful who still walks to the high hill top. And now there is Baggage and Bundle, silver mischief in sharp clawed kitten form. The adventures continue.